


if you had wings

by alpenglow



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child - Thorne & Rowling
Genre: Care of Magical Creatures, Draco is a big Softie, F/M, Getting Back Together, Getting Together, Happy Ending, Light Angst, Magizoology (Harry Potter), Mutual Pining, Non-Linear Narrative, Occlumency (Harry Potter), Words of Affirmation, acts of service, it's mostly just yearning, lily and draco friendship, mind-reading monkeys
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-14
Updated: 2021-02-14
Packaged: 2021-03-15 02:55:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 20,009
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29429163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alpenglow/pseuds/alpenglow
Summary: “Lily, I think I would like to kiss you.” He pulled back a bit, giving her the opportunity to say no. His tongue darted out to wet his lips. Lily watched, heart thudding.“You think?” She was trying to tease him, but her voice was so hoarse. “Only if you’re sure.”It was only fair she gave him a chance to back out, too. It was the last microscopic measure of her self control. She anticipated this in her bonesHis cheeks tugged in a small smile. “I’m really quite sure, actually.”
Relationships: Lily Luna Potter/Lysander Scamander
Comments: 3
Kudos: 11
Collections: Love Languages Mini Fest





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> i have been SO excited to share this fic!! this concept started many months ago with the vague idea of draco giving lily occlumency lessons and the image of snow. this fest gave me an opportunity to give it a plot (imagine! a plot!) and a whole cast of characters in a world i am now very, very attached to. 
> 
> so much love to thealmostrhetoricalquestion for organizing this fest, sharing it on tumblr, and generally being a wonderful human. 
> 
> to my betas, motherofmercury, maddi, and anophelia, i extend a molly-weasley-esque internet hug and my profound thanks. thank you for understanding commas as a concept, who these characters were supposed to be, and what i really meant when i made all those typos.

_ September 20, 2022 _

“Do you need help with that?”

Lily jumped, turning to the interloper. Lysander Scamander was always quiet, almost alarmingly so, and he made no exception when he approached her and her Blast-End Skrewts.

He’d come back to school looking different this year. Third year Lysander had been quiet, unassuming, a little strange. Fourth year Lysander was the same, just… 

Stretched out. 

He’d grown what seemed, impossibly, like a whole foot over the summer holidays. She’d seen the stretchmarks on his arms one day in Hogsmeade — pink, tangling lines racing up towards his shoulders. He’d grown so quickly his own skin couldn’t contain him. 

He’d cut his hair, too, over the summer. It poked straight out of his head, threateningly blonde, and now leaving his eyes unobstructed by his locks. 

His mother’s eyes. Lily’s godmother’s eyes. So, so wide. 

“My partner exploded her finger off,” said Lily, pointing to a splatter of blood in the grass where Hagrid had hurriedly collected Eliza Thomas’s finger from the ground before whisking her away to the infirmary. “But I can manage. I like Care.”

“Me too,” he said. He wasn’t looking at her anymore. He rocked a little on his heels. 

She gave him another long, scrutinizing assessment. His uniform sleeves were too short, as were his trouser legs. She could see that his socks didn’t match. One regulation grey, one ankle-length white. 

“Sure,” she said at last. “You can help me.”   
  


* * *

_ February 1, 2028  _

_ Picture a blanket of untouched snow _ . 

Eyes closed, she tries to oblige. It’s twilight in her mind’s eye, and the sky is streaked with purple. Early moonlight makes the crystals on the ground twinkle, winking at her as she tries to picture them still. 

Lily groans, wrenching her eyes open. “This isn’t working.”

“Perhaps you’re just not trying hard enough,” offers her instructor, leaning back in his chair to scrutinize her. 

She presses her lips down tight around a complaint, going back to the image in her mind. It’s not the first form of visualization Draco Malfoy has used to try to teach her Occlumency. 

First, there were filing cabinets. Absolutely disastrous — Lily still doesn’t even know if she’s ever seen a filing cabinet on purpose. There was no way she was going to be able to organize her mind with something she had no connection to. 

Next, was a lake, but she kept imagining a Giant Squid in it, thrashing about and disturbing the waters. Draco suggested an ocean after that, but she was too unnerved by the idea that they didn’t know  _ what _ was rooting around down there.

He was annoyed with her after that. “You’re not taking this seriously,” he’d spat.

But she was. She  _ is _ . She knows Draco doesn’t have the fondest memories associated with this practice, and she knows that the fact he’s agreed to teach her is a miracle in the first place — even if they do get along. She’s not trying to squander it for anything.

She returns to the snowy landscape. There are trees, she notes. Thin and tall, almost haunting in the distance, and far enough to spare the snow of their darkest shadows. Somehow, she just  _ knows _ that the snow is powder, and she can’t stop herself from imagining how it would feel in her bare hands. Rough and small, almost like sand, but so quick to melt between her fingers. 

“Merlin, you are so loudly and aggressively thinking of the wrong thing that  _ I _ can see it from here.”

Lily wrenches her eyes open to fix him with a scowl. “Well this is stupid. How am I supposed to organize my mind with this visual?”

“This is supposed to be how you  _ clear _ your mind. You are so far away from organizing your mind it shouldn’t even be on your radar.”

“Well, it’s not working.” She crosses her arms. 

Draco lets out a measured exhale. He’s trying to be patient, and the sight of it makes an angry knot beginning at the top of her chest come slowly undone. She sets her arms back onto the armrests of her chair in an attempt to be more patient herself. 

“I think you’ve forgotten why you’re here, Potter. I’ve told you Occlumency is an obscure and complicated branch of magic, and that if you are not properly motivated and prepared, you will fail. Remind me why this matters to you.” He rubs at the bridge of his nose. “For both our sakes.”

“I haven’t forgotten,” she says, almost indignantly. “I told you. There’s a cute little monkey that can read minds on our Reserve, and everybody is afraid of it but me.”

He nods for her to elaborate, and she’s yet again blown away by the pointlessness of his activities. In the three weeks of his instruction, including sessions three or four times a week, she has not Occluded once. All she does is imagine serene landscapes and sit quietly while she “adjusts to the feeling of a foreign presence in her mind.” They pick a subject and he combs through her memories, treading lightly as he does. He now has an extensive knowledge of her childhood Quidditch matches, but she’s not sure she’s anywhere closer to keeping the creature out of her head.

She probably could have learned this twice as fast from Auntie Hermione, and Auntie Hermione isn’t even an Occlumens. Or a Legilimens. She would just have read enough about the subjects to be a more efficient instructor.

“I heard that,” Draco says. 

“Liar,” she dismisses, even though it’s probably true. “The creatures are called the Satori. They’re indigenous to Japan, but they found this one in a warehouse in Liverpool. I’ve named him Clyve.” She pauses, considering her next point. “I think the mind reading is less of the problem, really. It would be one thing if he just knew your mind, but he recites your thoughts out loud.”

She feels Draco lurking at the edge of her mind, right up against her forehead. Not looking for anything, just listening. A foreign presence in her mind. She’s so used to it now that she’s starting to catch on to his most subtle intrusions.

“The other carers are afraid to go in together for obvious reasons. Nobody has said as much, but… I can’t blame them. It’s embarrassing.”

“That all?” He says it like she’s withholding something important, like she’s doing it on purpose. 

It grates on her. She’s here four times a week, after work and on her days off, because she cares about this.

“If you’re wondering about the history of killing and eating stray humans, I think that’s a myth. This one eats mostly nuts and flowers.”

“How cute.”

“I rather thought so.”

This time, Draco’s sigh is a delicate noise of discontentment. “We’re done for today, I think. Go for a walk, Potter. Ride a broom. Go play with your bowtruckle, or something. Try to clear your mind.”

“Is that a euphemism?”

He shrugs in a lazy way. “Whatever works.”

She comes out of the Floo in her apartment — a tiny thing, made even smaller by her two roommates, the owl, the kneazle, and a few bowtruckles that live in the walls. The Floo opens into one semi-large room: the seating area, framed towards the fireplace from which Lily has just left, including a sofa, a loveseat, and an armchair they found in thrift stores in Ottery St. Catchpole; the kitchen, almost unusably small, and even more crowded with the dining table Uncle Ron insisted on building for the flat when Hugo moved out. 

Eliza is in the kitchen, pajamas on and bonnet securely fastened, when Lily finishes brushing the soot off her shoulders. She’s holding a takeaway container with a very guilty look on her face. 

“Don’t tell Hugo,” she whispers. “I’m going to convince him he ate it when he was drunk.”

“Ah,” offers Lily, holding back a laugh. 

Hugo’s kneazle, Gilbert, hisses at Eliza’s feet, but is quickly won over when she feeds him a forkful of his owner’s leftovers. 

“He’s out with—?” begins Lily, but she’s cut off by Eliza’s eye roll.

“Mhmm,” she confirms around a mouthful. 

“Well,” Lily shrugs, “that makes one of us, at least.”

“His boyfriend is an arse!” says Eliza, waving the fork for emphasis. There’s a thick, pale band around the dark skin of her pointer finger where it had been summarily exploded (and quickly reattached) during their third year at Hogwarts. 

Gilbert gives a solemn meow of approval, though Lily is not sure if that is for Eliza’s sentiments or for the promise of more food. 

In Eliza’s defense, she’s right. Hugo’s been on a winning streak with losers for ages now, burying himself in the dating world for reasons beyond both of their comprehension. Lily has long-since learned her lesson about heartbreak, while Eliza claims she is happy to have never learned anything at all on that front. Lily’s not so sure she believes it. 

“I agree. But it’s also Hugo’s business if he wants to date terrible, attractive people.”

“He’s going to get his heart broken. And then it will be you and I left to pick up the pieces, and we all know I’m rubbish at consoling a broken heart.”

Lily smiles, but it’s a little tight. She snatches the fork away and steals a bite, offering Eliza solidarity in pillaging their roommate’s takeaway, at the very least. 

“You should convince him the boytoy did it. Much more believable,” she suggests.

Eliza’s eyes light up. “Two birds…”

“Don’t say I never did anything for you. I’m going for a walk.” She tries to tell herself that it’s not because Draco suggested it, and certainly not because he’s right. “I’ll be back in an hour?”   
  


* * *

_ November 19, 2022 _

Lily tried to be nice about it, but the truth was Eliza was a shit Care partner and Lysander was a great one. Ever since the finger incident, she’d been very unwilling to get her hands dirty with the Skrewts, and she always kept her hands tucked up in her sleeves like that would keep them safe. Lily thought this was particularly ridiculous because they had dragon-hide gloves they were supposed to be wearing anyway.

It was convenient, though, that Eliza was much more attached to her digits than to being Lily’s partner. She happily switched with Lily’s cousin, Hugo, and only sometimes met Lily’s eyes across the field with a desperate  _ Save Me _ look on her face. 

Lysander was brilliant. They hadn’t lost a single Skrewt since combining forces. Hagrid was so proud that sometimes he got teary-eyed when he came over to inspect their work. 

“Would ye like ter come help wit some of the O.W.L students?” Hagrid had asked one day, while everyone was wrestling  _ The Monster Book of Monsters _ back into their rucksacks. 

Lily’s head had snapped up at once. “Do you really mean that?”

“O’ course I do! Never had a better set a students than you two. Don’t, er, tell your parents that o’ course, but they just weren’t as interested in the creatures, you see.”

Lily was not surprised to hear as much about her parents, but she felt giddy down to her toes at Hagrid’s high praise.

“It’s a shame my dad never went to Hogwarts,” said Lysander, almost flushed. “He would have liked your class a lot, Professor Hagrid.”

Hagrid’s cheeks went rosy behind his massive beard. He waved a hand almost coyly. “Enough of that, lad. Hagrid is jus’ fine.”

  
  
  


* * *

_ February 2, 2028 _

At work, Lily grunts as she tries to lift a giant bag of feed. At the other end of the bag, her coworker Isabel crouches to help her out. Of the dozen sheds they have dotted across the Reserve, this is Lily’s least favorite. No animals, just organization. And so much  _ counting _ . She thinks it’s a bad sign to walk into a room and know you’ll be forced to do maths when you enter it. 

“That’s the last one,” pants Isabel. They’ve spent the early afternoon breaking down a shipment of food for the various creatures across the Reserve. “Next time, we’re making Tim do this.”

Lily wipes at her sweaty forehead. “He’s trying to bathe Clyve at the minute, so I’ll cut him some slack.”

Isabel considers this. She has a very contemplative face, Lily has always thought. Big, brown doe eyes, round cheeks, and curved brows — all framed by dark waves that fall to her shoulders. “Fair enough.”

The cold, January air has never felt so refreshing as it does then, when Lily is hot under her work clothes from all the labor. She has a vision of throwing herself against the half-melted snow, letting the coolness slip through her waterproof boiler suit to her skin.

When they make it back to the farmhouse, Horton’s crup runs to the door, barking and wagging his forked tail so quickly that Lily only sees a blur. 

“Yes, yes,” says Isabel, presenting her hands so that he can sniff them. “Big adventure, Who, yes.”

Who seems satisfied with his findings, and pants, smiling with his tongue out of his mouth. Lily pats at his head.

Horton is waiting in the office when she and Isabel walk in. It’s a messy space, littered with paperwork and dog toys. The Pygmy Puff that Lily bought him for Christmas last year is sitting on his shoulder quite seriously, as if it is an accountant looking over the finances. It reminds her of Lorcan, and the thought makes her clamp down a laugh starting in her chest. 

“How’d it go?” he asks, looking up from behind his reading glasses. “Everything all squared away?”

“Yes,” Lily reports. “We over-ordered on frozen fish, though.”

Privately, she thinks the sea-dragon will be thrilled.

“Ah. Good to know.” Horton makes a note and sticks it onto his desk. It sits alongside a dozen others, all of which are usually buried underneath the paperwork of the day. But it works for him — Henry Horton has never once forgotten anything she’s told him. 

Just then, Tim throws open the door to Horton’s office. He’s covered in scratches, dirt, and mashed banana, and he’s absolutely fuming. 

“Never again!” he says, a hot flush coming through on his tanned skin. “I’m never dealing with that sodding monkey again! It’s my nightmare scenario from start to finish. And he  _ scratched _ me, the bastard. I thought he was going to eat me.”

“I doubt that,” says Lily fairly. “You don’t look very delicious.”

Tim flips her the bird.

Horton sighs. “Timothy, you need to head to St. Mungo’s at once. We don’t know if Clyve is carrying any diseases.”

Tim frowns at that, and Lily’s sure he’s not frowning for himself. He complains, but the animals are always his chief concern. The thought that Clyve might be suffering hurts them all.

“Look, I hate to be that guy, but I don’t like working with Clyve either,” says Isabel, wringing her hands. “There are no such thing as bad animals, but I’m not sure I’m a compatible carer for him. He scares me. I’m not proud of it, but he does.”

“Lily?” Horton looks at her without expectation. He’s long retired, but she knows if she says she can’t handle it, he’ll wheel himself right into the shed and devote himself to Clyve’s care. And without any judgement to any of the three of them. Because Isabel is right, the best care isn’t from the bravest or smartest magizoologists, it’s about the carers who are most equipped for a particular creature. It’s about compatibility. If Isabel and Tim aren’t, it doesn’t make them bad carers. They’re good ones for admitting it.

“I’ve got it,” Lily nods. “I’m still working on the Occlumency training with Draco Malfoy. I’ve been thinking the mind-reading might stress Clyve out, too. If I can close my mind it might be a better caretaking experience all around.”

Tim grunts. “He’s the most high-strung monkey I’ve ever met, for sure.”

“Another thing,” says Horton, frowning at his paperwork. “We’re understaffed. I know you three have been managing really well since Zane left, but we need another carer here. Lily is the only one working the late shift, and that’s just unfair. There are too many animals for just the three of you, and I’m a poor supplement. I’ve spread the word. Expect a new colleague by the end of the month.”

Lily, Isabel, and Tim all exchange a look. They’re a tight-knit team. Zane had left five months ago to pursue a mastery, hoping to teach one day. They miss him, and not just because he was great at his job. The new carer will have big shoes to fill. 

“Right,” says Horton, clearly relaxed to have settled that matter. “How about I go with you to St. Mungo’s, Tim? We can play Snap in the waiting room.”

  
  
  


* * *

_ 2023 _

By the start of fifth year, Lysander had managed to coax his hair into a flopping, middle-parted style that looked so reminiscent of old ‘90s movies that Lily could hardly take it seriously. He just needed a pair of dark, round glasses and he’d be Hugh bloody Grant. 

When he actually got the glasses after winter hols, she started wondering if there was a god, and if he was cruel or kind. She was struggling to see the difference.

  
  


* * *

_ January 8, 2024 _

Eliza drummed her quill against the table. The force of the movement made her tight curls bounce, accentuating a full-body impatience Lily could never replicate — not for lack of trying. If Eliza noticed that she was leaking ink everywhere, she didn’t say. She was otherwise occupied, scanning the panorama of their friends before settling on Lily.

“Do you think we could get away with sneaking into Hogsmeade?”

The three boys’ heads snapped up at that. Hugo looked intrigued, but Lorcan and Lysander offered varying degrees of alarm. 

“Probably,” Lily considered. “But also maybe not. The cloak can’t fit five people, and besides, Scorpius and Albus are always using it.”

“But why? They’re in the same house, so it can’t be to fool around.” said Hugo. He huffed. “I bet you Rose is involved. She never tells me anything.”

“I wouldn’t doubt it. But they also have the map, so it’s not like I can find out. Honestly, what’s the point of being a Potter anyway?”

Her cousin offers her a sympathetic look. Lorcan does not look nearly so sympathetic — for any of them. 

“Hugo, you shouldn’t look nearly so eager to break school rules. Your mum would be livid,” said Lorcan sensibly. 

Hugo batted the concern away. “She’s always livid about something, that’s how politics works.”

Lily was not convinced as to the accuracy of that statement, but she’d seen Auntie Hermione rant and rave over dinner often enough to believe there was, at least, a nugget of truth to it.

Lysander frowned. “I don’t want to break any rules unless there’s a real reason to.”

“Ander, for you the only real reason is to rescue a beastie,” Eliza pointed out. Hugo offers a nod of agreement, pointing an approving finger at her.

Lysander’s frown only deepened. “I would rescue a  _ person _ too, Eliza.”

Lily buried her smile in her palm — a much more subtle venture than her cousin, who burst into laughter far too loud for the library. 

“Why do you even want to sneak out, E?” she asked.

Eliza heaved a big shrug. “For something to do. Firewhiskey. I don’t know.”

“We’re O.W.L students now, and I have every intention of getting all ten of mine,” said Lorcan. “We can’t just slack off anymore.”

Lysander nodded thoughtfully.

“Overachiever,” muttered Hugo. 

Lily leaned back in her chair. “I don’t know. I could be in the mood to slack off. I’m losing brain cells the more I read.”

She really was. She could feel them go, one by one, shriveling up in protest every minute she continued studying just how the stupid Muggle parliament worked. This was undoubtedly the result of something Auntie Hermione had been, at one point, furious about — lobbying Hogwarts until they finally added Muggle Studies on as a core class instead of an elective. And Lily thought it was great for social progress and everything, but her eyes were beginning to blur, and if she ever heard the words  _ hereditary peerage _ again, she might actually lose it. 

“That is not at all how that works,” said Lorcan seriously.

“I’m sure we can find something to do on the grounds,” suggested Eliza. “Oh! We could go sledding!”

“Shh!” hissed the librarian from across the room. All five of them flinched on instinct. 

“Yeah, great idea, Liza. Head-first collision with old Whompy. We’d probably die  _ and _ Neville would be fuming,” whispered Hugo. 

“Oh, well if it disappoints  _ Neville _ ...”

Lily caught Lysander’s eye across the table. His lips twisted sympathetically while Hugo and Eliza and carried on bickering. Lorcan looked ready to slam his head between the pages of his book just to muffle the sound. 

“The lake is frozen,” said Lysander quietly. “The ice is probably a meter thick. Hagrid said so just last week.”

Lily grinned. She looked to the rest of their friends. “All of you, listen up!”

The bickering duo silenced. Lorcan looked up from his book. 

“Lysander has figured it out—“

“ _ Lily Potter _ !” hissed the librarian. Lily jumped. The librarian was making steady strides across the room, brandishing her wand almost threateningly. 

“Go, go, go,” muttered Lily. “Save yourselves.”

Hugo was up in a flash. He winked at the librarian and left, dragging Lorcan with him. Eliza shot Lily a pitying look before taking off after the other boys. 

Lysander grimaced. “Solidarity.”

“I love you,” Lily laughed. Both of them froze. Merlin, she was an idiot. “I mean—“

“ _ Detention _ ! Both of you!”

  
  


* * *

_ February 4, 2028 _

She’s back in Draco’s living room by the end of the week. The set up of his chairs feels almost confessional, like he is some kind of therapist instead of a crotchety old widow moonlighting as an instructor in one of the most obscure branches of magic Lily has ever heard of. 

“Did you practice clearing your mind?” he asks once she is all settled into her seat. 

_ Er. _ “Yes.”

“I  _ know _ that you’re lying, Lily.” And he does know it, because she can feel him poke very briefly into her head and then retreat.

She offers a winning smile. “I was testing you.”

He sighs deeply, but there’s a little quirk of amusement in his lips. 

They work best like this, bantering almost harshly but without any real aggression. He’s always been a unique character, Draco, a little distant, a little surly — but in a way that Lily can appreciate. He is interested in self-improvement, in working everyday to be a better person than he was the day before, but he isn’t interested in being well-liked. In fact, she is confident that the only two opinions on the planet that matter to him belong to Scorpius and Albus. 

There’s a sincerity to it that she can get behind. 

He watches her for a moment, and then nods as if he has made a decision. “I think we should try a different strategy today. We haven’t made a lot of progress on visualization techniques so far, so it might be best to… do things the old-fashioned way.”

She can’t deny her vested interest in abandoning his pseudo-meditation, but there’s a hesitancy to his tone that makes her frown. “How do you mean?”

He smoothes invisible wrinkles out of his trousers. “To teach you Occlumency the way I learned it. It was not my preferred method for you, I admit, but it works.”

She watches him for a moment.

“Your psychotic aunt taught you Occlumency.” It’s not a question.

He sighs. “Correct. Obviously, as I am missing her charming sadistic streak, I would not be so rigorous in my application of her method.”

She considers this. He’s wrapped up in picking nonexistent lint off of his clothing, not meeting her eyes for anything, so she suspects he’s not wild about the idea. The implications of a Bellatrix-sanctioned mind invasion do seem daunting to her, but she can’t deny that they’re running out of other strategies. Not learning Occlumency is simply not an option for her. It’s about more than the privacy of her thoughts, it’s about providing care to a creature that needs it. 

And while it’s true that Draco is hermit-like and sometimes disagreeable, he’s not cruel. He makes good on his promises. 

“I trust you,” says Lily, meaning it.

Draco abandons his quest for lint. “I’m glad, Potter, but I just want you to be prepared. Real Legilimency can be painful.”

“So you’re saying what we were doing before wasn’t even real Legilimency?” she huffs. “Of course I wasn’t making any progress.”

He scowls delicately. “It was a refined approach, something you clearly would know nothing about.”

That almost makes her laugh, but she catches herself. “Look, I’ll tell you if you go too far. I promise.”

He visibly relaxes at that, a show of vulnerability so disarming that she’s not quite ready for it when he darts into her mind. She grits her teeth, hissing on impact.

It’s different than any other Legilimency experience she’s had. Draco was right when he said he’d been refined before — his earlier ventures were not unlike Clyve’s style. Discreet, almost unidentifiable if you were not paying close attention. This is the opposite. He is in her mind now, and he does not care whether or not she can tell. 

There’s discomfort, almost edging on pain — but there’s also something strange, something Lily has never experienced before. She can see Draco in front of her, eyes just slightly narrowed in concentration, but the image feels slightly out of focus. The visualization in her head takes precedence over what is happening before her, and in a flash, she can see just what Draco sees in her mind. 

Care of Magical Creatures lessons appear before her. Lily and Lysander tending to hippogriffs, only third years and teaching the fifth years how to manage the beasts. One of the creatures nips her on the arm, though not violently, and draws a little blood. Hagrid is there in an instant, reaching for her arm. He looks desperately worried, but Lily bats him off and lets herself bleed. She looks the hippogriff right in the eyes and, for a second, she swears it’s like a mutual understanding has passed between them. 

Another flash and she, Lysander, and Hagrid are drinking tea together in sixth year. There’s an acromantula on Lysander’s lap, a defector from the rogue colony in the woods. The spider is the only creature she has ever known — witch, wizard, half-giant, or otherwise — to eat Hagrid’s rock cakes so enthusiastically.

In real time, Lily feels dizzy and dry-mouthed. She tries to focus on the feeling of her feet against the floor, one of the grounding techniques Draco had explained in the first week of his instruction.

Then, he goes deeper, back to fourth year, to a blinding image of Lily sobbing over the first creature to die under her care: a sickly, anemic Niffler. She’s only fifteen, but Hagrid pours her a big glass of mead and reminds her that all she can do is her best.

She flinches hard at the sight, and two barn doors slam closed in her mind. She’s hardly gathered her thoughts before Draco speaks — cool, drawling, and mostly unaffected.

“Do you get a special joy out of being a cliché, Potter?”

She is sweaty and gasping in the aftermath. It takes a second for her to settle back into her senses. “What? What are you on about?”

“How silly of me to think I could tell you to clear your mind by using things that are considered pristine. You’ve never been pristine in your life.”

Her breath has come back to her now, but her heart thuds heavily. Like every carer, she has come to terms with the reality that she can’t save every creature, but the reminder of that first loss still stings. 

But the sting doesn’t last long, not five years after the fact. It is not much of a surprise to either Lily or Draco that sick things sometimes die, and that it hurts when they go. He would never judge her for that.

“That hardly matters,” she says, forcing herself to focus. “You’re polished enough for the both of us. Elaborate, please.”

“When you shut your mind to me, you were closing the doors to a barn, were you not?”

She nods. 

Draco almost looks pleased. “Tell me a bit about your Reserve. What has to happen before you shut the barn doors for the night?”

She tells him, briefly, how she checks the water supply in all the pens, milks the goats, feeds the chubby Miniature Bearded Sea-Dragon that Uncle Charlie rescued on a camping trip in Scotland, and makes sure every creature is clean, full, and happy before she shuts them in for the night. 

“What does the Reserve look like at night? After you’ve closed the doors?”

These days, it’s dark. There’s half-melted snow on the ground, so the place is spotted in swaths of white, brown, and green — not that you can see any of that clearly in the nighttime. Lily works the afternoon shift, and she doesn’t get off work until nine at night most days. That far out from any city, she can see every star in the sky when it’s clear. 

He nods along. His face is mostly impassive, but there’s a silver glint in his eyes that celebrates the progress. 

“Close your eyes. Go to that space in your mind. It should be easier to slip into it now that you’ve found it.”

This time, when she tries to oblige, the feeling is much different. 

Before, in trying to create something from nothing, Lily became fixated on the details. She was overwhelmed with the choice. How did this thing look? How did that? It didn’t relax her; it was a task she was trying to finish, desperate for an O in order to move on to the next thing.

Now, when she returns to that space, it’s already established. She sees it clearly, the infinite farmland of her mind. She visualizes herself turning to see it from every angle. Endless grass, tracks of fences, a single, rickety farmhouse, and a few barns and sheds dotted across the landscape. It’s not pristine, nor should it be. But in its inelegance and its disorder, it is serene. 

The land looks almost exactly like Horton’s Reserve, save one notable distinction. There are no creatures.

The place is empty, and it’s because the only thing that needs caring for here are her own thoughts and memories. 

They continue for a while. Draco enters her mind in varying flourishes: sometimes subtly, sometimes harshly, but always looking only for a single inconsequential memory to practice with. Lily begins to see how she might force him out of her mind intentionally, instead of instinctively like before, but the process is draining. He offers few pointers. 

“I learned by figuring it out myself,” he says with a shrug. She has another mutinous thought about asking her Aunt for help instead, and he raises his brow when he catches it.

It starts to get late and, eventually, Lily’s stomach grumbling ruins both of their concentration. He walks her to the Floo.

“You did really well today, Potter. I am… pleased with your progress.”

Lily isn’t one to fluster over anybody’s approval, but she knows praise from Draco means more. He doesn’t dole it out so generously. She nods, holding back a smile. 

“Thank you.”

This time, when Lily returns to the flat, Eliza has food for both of them. And Hugo, too. Lily hangs up her scarf, watching with lifted brow. “What’s all this for?”

It’s an array. Four different kinds of pizza, and two different bottles of wine, all spread out on the coffee table in front of the sofa. Eliza and Hugo have managed the better part of one of the bottles all on their own. Hugo lifts a glass her way.

“To the single life, cousin.”

“Single life?” Lily eyes Eliza as she pours herself a glass of wine. 

“Yeah. Turns out that Jasper bloke was a freak. He ate my takeout the other day, right? And that’s annoying, but not unforgivable. But when I confronted him about it, he got super defensive and just  _ refused _ to admit it. How fucking bizarre is that? And if he’s going to lie about shit like that, Merlin knows what else he’d lie about.”

Eliza tries to shove a whole slice of pizza into her mouth in one go. 

“And he couldn’t suck dick for shit, so it’s no skin off my back.” Hugo shrugs.

Eliza splutters, choking on her food. 

Hugo smacks her hard on the back, frowning. “You okay, Liza?”

She gasps. “Yeah, yeah.” Her voice is scratchy with the trauma. She takes a hearty sip of wine.

Lily, trying to banish a smile from her lips, pulls a few slices onto her plate. At least Eliza’s plan had worked. All of their lives were better without Jasper the Philosopher condescending to them whenever their paths had the misfortune of crossing.

“How was your session with Draco?” asks Eliza, much recovered. 

“Better,” dismisses Lily, waving a hand. “I’m just impatient. I want to be an effective carer, you know?”

“You’re great at your job!” says Hugo, topping up her untouched glass.

She shrugs. “Sure, but there’s a different skill set for every creature. I don’t have the one I need for this one yet, and he’s suffering because I can’t learn fast enough.”

Eliza fixes her a look. “I don’t think that attitude will make you learn faster or better.”

Lily opens her mouth and then closes it. Because what rebuttal can she offer that? Eliza’s right. She takes an annoyed bite of pizza instead. 

“Hey, come on! It’s a night for celebration! And I have good news for all of us,” says Hugo, rubbing his hands together. 

Lily doubts anything he says will be more exciting for either of them than his breakup with Jasper, but she gestures for him to elaborate. “Go on, then.”

“Lysander wrote. His trip in South Africa is officially concluded. He’s being released from his duties on the camp there and he’s coming back to the UK in a few days.”

If Lily hadn’t swallowed, she would have choked just like Eliza. “Really?” She flicks her eyes to her best friend. “Did you know about this?”

Eliza is shocked, too. “No, no clue. Is he staying with Lorcan?”

“For now. He’s getting a job on a Rehabilitation Reserve.”

Instantly, Eliza and Lily look to one another. Lily’s jaw is slack, dread simmering in her stomach, but Eliza’s eyes are bright. 

Lily has a brilliant vision of Lysander tanned, bashful, and smiling. She sees him petting Who in the farmhouse; bonding with Horton over their adventures abroad. She sees herself walking with him around the perimeter of the Reserve, and their laughs disappear into the vast, open sky.

“Did he say which Reserve?” asks Eliza. “What if he’s working on the same one as Lily?”

The thought consumes her for another moment, sharp between her ribs.

“What are the odds of that?” laughs Hugo. “Aren’t there like five Rehabilitation Reserves across Britain?”

“Yeah,” says Lily, nodding. “There are.”

“Let me find the letter.” Hugo stands. “I swear he mentioned it, but I can’t remember what he said.” He walks down to his door, calling after Lily. “I’m surprised you’re not more pleased, Lils. You were distraught when he left.”

“Obviously,” she snapped. “We’d been dating for two years.”

She loves Eliza, Hugo, and Lorcan, but they aren’t Lysander. They get bored when she starts talking about how she’s been monitoring the water intake of the fire-breathing goats. 

She’d been lonely when he left in a way she didn’t know she could ever be, surrounded by the people she cherished the most. The part of her that she got to share with him has been knocked out of place in his absence, and her other friends simply can’t fill it. 

“Found it!” calls Hugo. “Oh, shit. Wow.”

Eliza lets out a tiny squeal of excitement. Lily walks a line between hope and despair.

“Yeah, it says it right here. He’ll be starting at Horton’s Reserve for the Rehabilitation of Magical Creatures.” Hugo trails off. “Then he asks where you’re working, and if you know anybody from that Reserve.”

“Well,” says Eliza brightly, “I’d reckon you know a few people.”

  
  


* * *

_ May 11, 2024 _

She was reasonably sure they would become part of the couch before sunrise. It was dark outside now. Only the fire in the hearth and a floating few candles provided them with light to study by. Lysander had a supplementary text his great-grandfather had written cracked open. It looked like he was trying to dive into it head first. 

The essay was for Transfiguration, but it had so much to do with magical creatures it could have been for Care. Professor Patil never went easy on them. She’d assigned it to them in pairs with the object of enumerating and explaining the differences between animal transfiguration across the classes of animal. There were seven, and the differences were complex enough to make Lily consider running away with the centaur colony. She reckoned they would accept her if she swore she hated humanity enough.

“I hate how useful this is going to be,” she whispered. “We can’t even complain that it’s pointless.”

“I don’t plan on transfiguring  _ anything _ into a…” He consults the book. “ _ Agnatha _ .”

She snorts. “No, stupid, it’s not for  _ that _ . Knowing the rules of animal transfiguration like this will help with healing. For when we’re magizoologists.”

He looked up, blinking and somehow surprised.

He always looked at her like she was a perfect riddle. A hundred, a thousand questions he would never really know the answer to. She thought he wasn’t giving himself enough credit; he knew her better than anyone. 

She kicked at him from across the couch. “Who knows? Maybe we’ll own our  _ own _ Reserve one day. Maybe even a Sanctuary.”

He cocked his head. “Maybe we will.”

  
  


* * *

_ February 7, 2028 _

Horton confirms what Lysander wrote in his letter that Monday. Tim and Isabel are both moved by the news. 

“A Scamander? Here?” says Isabel, eyes wide. She’s an Ilvermorny transplant, so Lily can understand how she might be excited. 

Tim is more relieved than anything. “I remember him. The two of you helped my class with our N.E.W.T work when you were fourth years.”

Horton lifts a brow. “You know him, Lily?”

She smiles a little sheepishly. “I had no idea he was applying, really. He’s been in South Africa helping expand the Catalogue of Creatures there. Letters can be… infrequent.”

And addressed to the whole flat, not just Lily. It was probably a deliberate choice on his part, she thinks. Both of them understood that their relationship ended once he touched that Portkey. To write to her individually would be to nourish a flame they’d both tried to extinguish. 

“So we know he works well with most of the team already,” beams Isabel. “This might not be awful, guys!”

“I should hope not,” says Horton. “He starts next week.”

After that, Lily tries to clear her mind. She has work to do.

They keep Clyve in an empty shed they built for him when he first arrived. He’s too skittish around the other animals, and almost as bad around the carers. 

Over the weeks, he’d grown more and more comfortable with them. He likes Lily the best, so far as she can tell, because she sees him most frequently and she always brings him treats. She has some in her pocket now, a big Medjool date and some lilac she had Neville send her over the weekend. 

She swings the door open and he makes a chittering sound. It doesn’t sound half as menacing as he thinks it does. 

“Awh,” coos Clyve. “He’s actually quite cute. I don’t know why Tim is so afraid of him, that big baby.”

From the research Lily has done, she knows the Satori are a subspecies of the Japanese macaques. Clyve, scarcely older than two years by their count, is still a juvenile. His over-large ears poke out wide from the side of his head, clearing even his impressive white-brown fur. 

Lily makes a big show of pulling the date from her pocket. He stops his recitation and his eyes widen in excitement. “Ah, ah,” she says, shaking her finger as he grabs for it. “Let me clean your fur.”

“Greedy bastard,” he transcribes.

“Good boy.” She picks at his shoulder and he lets her, reaching into her pocket for the first bite of the date.

“Merlin, his fur is a mess. Why isn’t he cleaning himself? Monkeys groom themselves like any other animal… I wonder if he’s sick. Merlin, would he shut the fuck up?”

Lily brushes back the thick fur on his stomach, and Clyve screeches so loud she leaps back. Her stomach swoops in traitorous apprehension. His teeth are bared, with long white fangs out towards her.

“Maybe the Satori do eat humans,” he says for her.

“It’s not nice to threaten people,” scolds Lily, but she’s feeling a little more spooked than she’d like to admit. “Come back, I need to see what’s on your stomach.”

She’d just made out a flash of red, maybe some kind of sore or rash… Her mind flashes to the worst possibility, some kind of infection. He screeches again. 

She tries to change her thoughts to pictures. Maybe if he’s reading her mind, he can understand her meaning. Generally, monkeys are incredibly smart creatures. Magizoologists had even taught some primates sign language. She imagines herself cleaning his wounds gently, wrapping him up, feeding him a great pile of dates. 

No recognition flickers in his eyes.

“Stupid fucking monkey,” he says. 

Lily tries for a different approach. She lays flat on the floor of the shed, mindful she isn’t laying in any filth as she does. She can practically hear Draco’s voice in her head.

“Clear your mind, Potter.”

“I  _ know _ , Clyve.”

“But what if I can’t actually Occlude? I don’t want to think about Lysander around Clyve, and I can’t keep bothering Draco forever…  _ Lysander _ .” Clyve cocks his head, like he’s found something good, and begins a long-winded recitation of Lily’s thoughts. It feels like a small rush through the center of her brain. Not painful, but uncomfortable.

She’s prepared for the recitation, but it doesn’t take the sting out of her cheeks. She’s deeply grateful Tim and Isabel have gone home for the day, and can’t hear any of Clyve’s interpretation of her mind from the grounds.

Lily exhales hard out of her nose. It’s hard work, but she does as she and Draco practiced, tucking thoughts into their respective pens. She shoves Lysander to the very back of the barn. It’s not banishment, it’s protection. 

The ordeal is tiring and takes far longer than she expects it to. She’s sweating despite the coolness of the ground underneath her. When all her thoughts are accounted for, she sees it in her mind. She closes the barn door gently. 

It feels different in her head. Fleeting thoughts get put back into their pens. Even if she opens the barn door to put it away, everything is tucked behind another gate behind it. The pens keep her thoughts protected. 

There’s a perfect vacantness to her mind. 

She lays back on the dirt, pulling down her overalls and lifting up her shirt to expose her stomach. Part of her tenses for the impact of claws, but Clyve watches her with his head cocked. There’s no malice on his face — in fact, there’s a newfound calm in his expression.

She places her hands on her stomach, mimicking what she might do to his fur. She pinches lightly at the surface of the skin, inspects her empty fingers for bugs, and throws them to the side. 

“Do you see?” she asks. 

Clyve farts. She groans. “Really?”

“Stupid fucking monkey,” he says, immediately noticing when she drops her guard on her Occlumency.

“Yeah,” she agrees, passing him the lilac. Her thoughts come tumbling back into her mind. “Definitely.”

* * *

_ September 28, 2024 _

She wondered why Lysander had asked her down here so late. It was at the very edge of curfew. Twenty minutes, and they’d be racing up the halls to avoid old Filch and the ghost of his evil cat. 

A nagging, hopeful part of her thought this could be a date. He’d called her out to watch the glowflies leave their chrysalises. Both of them had been helping Hagrid and his third years study the creatures.

Hagrid had to know they were here. His hut was just there, not twenty meters away. The light was on, and music was playing from inside that they could faintly hear. Ballads, but Lily didn’t know the singer. 

Quite romantic, actually, part of her allowed. 

“Look!” Lysander whispered. He put an arm around her shoulder, a rare touch, pointing with his other to the crackles of light that were flickering in every chrysalis. 

Her body lit up right along with them. She flushed, glad it was dark. He didn’t drop his arm from around her shoulder, and she was beginning to lose all focus on the light growing inside the shells. 

The first glowfly tore at their chrysalis, and Lysander’s grip tensed on her shoulder. It drew her focus. 

The coordination was almost astounding. The glowflies began to tear open at their shells in an almost synchronized fashion. The insides of the chrysalises were dusted with the glowing powder from their wings. They gave off a soft half-light, like a blue ember on the ground. Then, the glowflies stretched their wings and took off. Their bioluminescence dragged color through the sky, and Lily forgot how to breathe. 

They glowflies fluttered around the nest for a while, then ventured upwards, upwards. 

“Wait a second.” Lysander pulled his arm from her shoulder, extracting his wand and muttering a series of spells. He conjured a curve of fine mesh and erected it into a large sphere, holding the glowflies inside. He set it atop a bush of begonias outside Hagrid’s hut. “For the first years,” he said. “They’d be so disappointed if their projects vanished into the night sky.”

Lily battled an overwhelming urge to grab hold of him and never let go.

He looked a little sheepish. “I wanted to show you them. They make me think of you.”

“Really?” She watched them flutter around within the mesh sphere. They were beautiful.

“They’re bright,” he explained. “And so are you. Not just that you’re smart, I mean the core of you. If you had wings, they’d look like that.”

Lysander was just centimeters from her now. The pink curve of his lips was completely obstructed from her view. All she could see were his eyes. 

“Lily, I think I would like to kiss you.” He pulled back a bit, giving her the opportunity to say no. His tongue darted out to wet his lips. Lily watched, heart thudding.

“You think?” She was trying to tease him, but her voice was so hoarse. “Only if you’re sure.”

It was only fair she gave him a chance to back out, too. It was the last microscopic measure of her self control. She anticipated this in her bones. 

His cheeks tugged in a small smile. “I’m really quite sure, actually.”

Her chest sang. It was Fate. The power of Blast-End Skrewts. The divinity of stretchmarks. She’d been walking the steep, winding path to Hagrid’s hut her whole life, waiting for him to be at the end of it. 

He kissed her hesitantly, like he was afraid to do it wrong, and with her mouth she tried to assuage him of his fears and hers.


	2. Chapter 2

_ February 9th, 2028 _

She practically skips out of the Floo two days later. Draco is all set up in his living room as normal, and this time he’s even set out some tea and biscuits. 

Clearly, she is moving up in the world if she’s earned refreshments. 

“You’ll never believe it,” she says.

He looks up from his newspaper. “Hello to you, too, Potter.”

She doesn’t bother with returning the greeting. “I Occluded successfully. That damned monkey couldn’t get into my brain. The sweetest silence of my — fuck —“ 

She cuts off as she feels Draco slam into her mind. The force of it makes her physically lose balance, and she has to steady herself with a hand against the wall. 

“No foreplay?” she grimaces.

He laughs, but he doesn’t drop his attack. “Show me how you did it.”

He doesn’t make it easy. Draco sets a relentless pace: wrecking fences, turning over troughs, destroying the meticulously crafted barn in her mind. She squeezes her fingernails into her palm.

She sees herself kissing Lysander’s neck, and she gasps. “Hey!”

“Does the monkey care?”

The torrent of images is so fast Lily can hardly process them. Her father hands her her first broom. Her mother teachers her how to use a tampon. Albus cries on his bedroom floor the first time he and Scorpius fight, and Lily pets his hair. 

The image makes Draco hesitate. 

Lily takes her advantage. In a flash, she is righting the wrongs of her mental palace. She takes the memories to the pens where they belong. She visualizes Draco’s hands leaving her mind. She closes the barn doors behind them both. 

When she opens her eyes, Draco is lightly flushed. His forehead glistens a little, and he dabs at it with a monogrammed handkerchief. Her breath is labored, but she feels victorious. 

“Not bad,” he admits. “I wasn’t holding back much.”

“This calls for tea,” grins Lily. She pours it for both of them.

“When we’ve finished Occlumency, maybe I’ll teach you etiquette,” says Draco, frowning as she slurps at her hot drink. 

She lifts a pinky in response. 

Draco rolls his eyes. “Put down your tea. We’ll go again. You’re making a lot of progress, and I don’t want to lose momentum. I won’t hold back this time, so be prepared.”

“How come you never just want to sit and chat?” she grumbles, but she sets down her tea, anyway. “I beat you. That earns me two biscuits and some banter.”

“These aren’t social calls, Potter. Biscuits and banter can be scheduled for another day.”

“You’d have me for a social call?” The thought makes her smile. 

“Of course.” He looks almost offended that she is surprised. “I do enjoy spending time with you, even if you are horribly ill-mannered. And our families will be linked by marriage soon enough. You’ll be my family, too.” 

She blinks, taken aback. Draco doesn’t say things like that lightly — ever — but there’s a particular weight to that word.  _ Family _ . It’s the most important thing in the world to him.

For the first time, she realizes that these lessons are more than just Draco passing on his knowledge to the next generation. It’s no small feat to teach Occlumency, and it means something that he’s chosen to teach her. It’s his welcoming present; Lily is being ushered into that small fold of people he’d do anything for. 

It floors her. 

Her next realization comes too late. By the time she realizes Draco has used the distraction to his advantage, he’s already inside her head. She huffs, but she knows it doesn’t mean his words have any less significance. He’s just a Slytherin; of course he’d use her surprise to his advantage. She should have anticipated it.

The first image flashes across her mind with a splash of green.

_ “Do you need help with that?” _

“ _ My partner exploded her finger off. But I can manage. I like Care.” _

_ “Me too. _ ”

Lily gasps. Her hands fly to the sides of her chair, trying to center herself on something tangible. The wood of the armrest is smooth under her fingers, and Lily imagines herself using something just like it to build back her control. 

The image changes. Lysander is looking at her from behind his brand-new glasses, surprised at a joke she’s told Lorcan across the table in the Great Hall. 

Lily tries not to look. She tries to conjure images of her own to mind, deliberate ones. If she can distract him with other memories, she might be able to get more traction. He flicks them away like lint. 

Then, a flash, and Lysander is kissing her for the first time. It’s the first time Lily’s body has felt so completely alive. 

In real time, she grits her teeth. She can’t believe Draco is seeing this, that he’s seeking out these memories just to agitate her. He told her he wasn’t going to hold back, but this is far more challenging than anything they’d ever done.

He lied before. He wasn’t just holding back a little in their spar earlier, he was holding back a lot. This intrusion affects more than her mind; her whole body feels boneless, achey and hot. Almost like she has a fever, she’s sweating and panting. She’s beginning to lose her grip on the little control she’d extracted from him. With great effort, she rights a single overturned trough.

Later in sixth year, she’s watching Lysander build up the courage to ask for what he wants. She moves his hand to her body before he has to say anything. She knows exactly what he means. 

A flash, and she’s kissing his neck again. 

“Don’t be a prick, Draco,” she snaps. She knows where he’s going with this, and it’s out of order. 

He isn’t affected by her tone. “I’m not a half-assed teacher, Potter. And I know you’re not a half-assed student.”

He proves it by flicking to a memory she has from fifth year, sneaking out of bed after curfew to tend to her assigned hippogriff. Night after night she leaves under the Invisibility Cloak, making sure the creature is safe and nurtured. 

“When you care, you excel,” says Draco. He sounds so unaffected by the labor of digging through her mind that she only feels more exhausted to hear it. “These memories matter to you, don’t they? Kick me out. I have no right to them.”

Lily starts to mend her fences again, but he knocks them down with a swift change in visuals. A desperate frustration begins in her gut.

It’s the summer between sixth and seventh year, and she and Lysander are laid out on a blanket in the orchard behind the Rookery. He’s kissing her places she’s never been kissed before. 

“Stop,” she pleads.

“Make me,” encourages Draco. “You did it before.”

“I can’t!” She tries to slam the barn doors closed. She’s forgotten about the pens and the stupid troughs and anything happening inside. In her mind, she slams them closed harder and harder every time, but nothing works. “You won.”

His retreat from her mind is as smooth as his entry. When he leaves, she feels her body turn to mush. She slumps over in the chair, nauseous and bone-tired.

“No,” he corrects. “Nobody won. I win when you succeed.”

She wrenches her eyes open. A cup of tea floats her way. It helps more than she expects, and she takes an impolite gulp.

She signed up for the Bellatrix Lestrange method, understanding it would be intense. Painful, even. But she supposes she never considered that it would mean that, by the end of it, Draco Malfoy would know things about her not even Eliza did. 

Shame stings hot on her cheeks. 

He promised her a kindness he was not offered during his own instruction. She wonders just how grueling his must have been if this is a tame comparison.

“Why these memories?” he asks, much more gently than she is expecting. “What, you’re not over him? Still in love with him?”

“You’re hardly the person to be belittling me for lingering love,” she snaps. It’s a low blow, but she feels like a wild, defensive animal has taken up residence in her chest. “That was approaching too far, Draco.”

To her surprise, he looks thoughtful, not offended. And part of him looks a little scolded at her words.

“Not belittling, Potter. I’m honest with you. The things I find in your head stay between us. I’m not interested in betraying your trust. And I’m happy to teach you, but that means teaching you  _ well _ . As long as you haven’t dealt with these feelings you won’t begin master Occlumency.”

She scowls. “I don’t need to  _ master  _ it, I need to keep a monkey out of my head.”

“You will master it, anyway.” But he sounds a little petulant about it, and that almost makes Lily smile.

  
  
  


* * *

_ June 18, 2026 _

The Care N.E.W.T had been stupidly easy. The examiner asked her to coax a unicorn out of the woods like it was hard, like she hadn’t done it a thousand times before. The unicorn they used, Sparkles, recognized Lily from the get-go and trotted over, eagerly sniffing at Lily’s hands for any sign of a carrot. 

The N.E.W.T examiner had blinked on, uncomprehending. Lily wondered if they’d invent a rank higher than O just for her.

Afterwards, Lily found Lysander waiting for her in the courtyard. Eliza, Hugo, and Lorcan were supposed to meet them, but Lily suspected that Hugo had dragged Lorcan off to some secluded part of the grounds, bottle in hand, in a last-ditch effort to corrupt him. And if she knew anything about her best friend, Eliza had tagged along, not willing to miss the show. 

Lysander didn’t grab her hand when they started walking around to the front side of the castle, towards the Black Lake, but he did grab her bookbag. She insisted that he didn’t have to, but he silenced her with a half-stern look. Her whole body warmed at the sight of it.

There was a lonely patch of grass on the far side of the beech tree, at the point of the shore that began to curve away from the land. Lysander transfigured a broken branch into a blanket (a feat of magic Lily was sure she could never manage) for them to lay on. 

She felt dizzy with happiness, and very glad her cousin and her best friends had fucked off to the woods. They settled onto the blanket side by side, not technically touching, but close enough that her skin tingled with his proximity. 

“How was your N.E.W.T?” she asked, scrunching her closed eyes against the bright sun.

“They gave me Crystal,” he admitted. “She just came up and demanded to be stroked. Threatened to stab me with her horn when I stopped.”

Lily grinned. “Violent thing.” 

“Yeah. The examiner about shit himself when he saw it.”

She laughed hard. “But you’re a Scamander, he should have expected it.”

“That’s what I thought.” 

She could hear the little burst of pride in his voice. Lily thought it would have been easy to be resentful of that legacy, to want to distinguish yourself so much that it drove you mad. Merlin knew she felt that way sometimes. But Lysander loved it. He was a Scamander through and through. 

“Speaking of…” he trailed off. “I’ve been meaning to tell you something.”

“Go on.” She turned to him, brushing her nose against his shoulder, taking in a deep breath of him. There was an inoffensive, almost noteless clean smell to him, but underneath it, a hearty woodsiness. He was cedar and pine and moss.

“My parents are going to South Africa for a while,” he said. “It’s a launching point, you know, for expeditions up the continent. They’re working with some local experts on the Catalogue there.”

Lily knew this. Luna had mentioned it in a letter a while ago. She nodded. “Right.”

He hesitated. “I’m going with them.”

He must have sensed her stiffen, because he tensed, too. 

“Oh.” 

She was already lightheaded with the smell of him and the euphoria of a perfect exam, and his admission knocked the air out of her. Even laying down, she was dizzy with confusion. 

He’d never mentioned this in the weeks they’d both known about it. They’d spoken about it  _ together _ , about how much Lily was going to miss her godmother, about how jealous she was they were going on the trip. Lysander had agreed. He’d said it would be hard to be away from his parents for that long. He’d said the trip would be fantastic.

Her face fell. He never said he wasn’t going. 

“How long have you known you were gonna go?” 

He brushed his hands against her wrist between them. She looked down at their hands, feeling it was somehow fitting that they weren’t clasped together.

“I decided last week.”

Frustration flickered in her. “Well, why didn’t you say anything?”

“We had N.E.W.Ts coming up, and we were both distracted. I’m sorry, I thought you’d be happy.” He sounded genuinely distressed.

She sat up to look at him, feeling only more confused. “I am happy for you. Just, it’s two years. It’s a two year commitment.”

He didn’t say anything. His eyes were always round, but there was a supernatural wideness to them now. She could see the effort in them, transparently watching her face for a reaction. They looked so much more vulnerable without the glasses. She had the feeling he was expecting something of her, but she wasn’t sure what it was. 

She frowned. “Do we break up? Once you leave?”

He grabbed his glasses, shoving them onto his face unceremoniously. “I don’t… I don’t know. Is that what you want?”

“What I don’t want is to be dating someone who lives on a different continent for two years,” she snapped. 

He went still. After a few moments, he nodded. “Okay. If that’s what you want.”

She wanted to scream. What she wanted was for him to  _ stay _ , for them to get jobs  _ together  _ on a Reserve like she’d always planned in her head. It had never occurred to her that they had different visions for the future. She felt unbelievably stupid.

“Lily,” he said, seeking out her eyes. “It’s four months until I go.”

She felt her body relax. This time, they understood each other perfectly. When he sought out her hand, she gripped his back in kind.

“Let’s just enjoy the sun for now,” he said. 

She kissed him, and she wondered if he noticed that it didn’t quite feel the same knowing there was an expiration date. 

  
  


* * *

_ February 11, 2028 _

Lily has had a uniquely shitty day. She’s slept poorly in the days since her last session with Draco, staring at her ceiling while Eliza breathes deeply on the other side of the room. The few minutes she steals are deep sleep, and when she’s wrenched from them by her alarm, she feels less rested than when she laid down the night before. 

At work, Clyve has a fit. Lily is too tired to Occlude properly, and he works himself into a frenzy when he realizes she’s tried to sneak some antibiotics into his food. He is screaming her thoughts back at her, and it takes all of her patience not to break down into frustrated tears right then. The animals come first, even before her pesky, self-indulgent breakdowns. 

She can’t tell if the rash on his skin is getting better or worse, but his fur is matted where he won’t clean himself, and Lily feels like a failure.

She should have canceled her session with Draco after work considering, but she wanted to keep pushing forward — even if it does mortify her on the best of days. But today has been far from the best of days, and it takes only two minutes of Draco’s relentless instruction for her to vomit into a potted plant and finally break into tears. 

To his credit, Draco is there with a handkerchief at once, extending it to her like a peace offering. He feeds her ginger biscuits and water before telling her, gently, to go home and rest. She refuses. They spend the rest of the session practicing visualization techniques, and he does not push her once.

When she leaves to return to her flat, all she wants is to sleep. She’s finally exhausted enough to lay down onto her bed and sleep for a decade or so, but there’s two extra bodies in her living room when she steps out of the Floo.

Briefly, she thinks she might pass out from the pure shock of it. 

The two of them sit side by side on the couch, almost identical if not for the distinctions in the shades of their hair and skin. Lorcan is pale, with short hair neatly combed off to the side.

Lysander is… 

Bronzed. 

_ That _ ’s the word, she decides, in the ten seconds of shock she allows herself. His skin is some radiant combination of tanned and sunburned, and his hair — normally bright blonde under the cloudy British skies — is pure cornsilk now, curling just under his ears. 

“Lorcan.” Lily blinks, flipping between them. “Lysander. I didn’t realize you two would be coming over.”

She tries to insert a nice little thread of contempt into her last sentence, shooting daggers at a seemingly distracted Eliza Thomas. 

Lysander had arrived the day before, if she remembers correctly. She knew she would see him at some point this week before they started work together on Monday, but she didn’t think it would be  _ today _ . 

Eliza looks up, trying to shrug in a perfectly casual way. “Yeah. Sort of just happened, actually. I ran into Lysander at the store and thought, oh, what the hell. It’s practically tradition we have a takeaway after your sessions with Draco anyway. Might as well have the Scamandies over.”

Gilbert meows his disapproval, and Lily feels vindicated.

Lorcan shoots her an apologetic frown. “Sorry, Lils. I didn’t realize it’d be such a surprise.”

“Not at all.” Exhaustion has been siphoned out of her by some invisible force, leaving her jittery and wide-eyed. “My apologies. I haven’t seen  _ either _ of you in a while, I’m happy you’re here. I want hugs from both of you, in fact.”

Lorcan rises first, pecking her on the cheek and squeezing her briefly before stepping back to allow his brother access. She turns to Lysander, and, suddenly, the room exists in a vacuum. Everybody is watching them, nervous and edgy. 

His eyes are impossibly green against his tan, offering her something between apology and sympathy. “Hi,” he says. “Long time no see.”

Her heart hammers and clenches and spasms in a way that feels thoroughly unhealthy. 

She grins. “Hi.”

When he pulls her in, a small part of her clicks back into place. It aches upon reentry, but she feels more whole. The familiarity of him is overwhelming; it seems strange that somebody could smell so very much the same after two years in a different country. But he does. He smells woodsy and clean, exactly as he has since he was a teenager. 

The seal pops, and air rushes back into the living room. Eliza, Hugo, and Lorcan chatter away about something, but Lily can’t identify the sound. They linger like that for a while, with Lily breathing in his skin, and his hands flat between her shoulder blades. 

Lysander drops his arms, squeezes her sides once, then pulls back. 

“I promise I didn’t apply at Horton’s because you’re working there. I didn’t even know.” He looks very serious.

“It’s fine,” she says, a little amused and meaning it. “Even if you did. We always talked about working together on a Reserve, didn’t we? Now we’ll get the chance.”

“We did.” He smiles, but his eyes are a little curious. All this time, and he’s still looking at her like he can’t quite puzzle her out. She still doesn’t understand it.

“Exactly,” she says. She takes a seat on the armchair next to his spot on the couch. The ache in her chest twinges. “Tell me about the Catalogue. How many creatures did you document?”

His face lights up, and he launches into a detailed explanation of all of them. Lily basks in it for ages. Around them, the room moves. Hugo dishes them out more food, Lorcan slides another beer his brother’s way. Lily’s exhaustion catches back up with her and her eyes burn, but she just makes a cup of tea. The conversation ebbs and flows between all five of them; they shout jokes across the room at each other, but Lily and Lysander always come back to center. The two of them and an entire continent of creatures.

He is in the process of explaining the eleventh animal, a sort of antelope whose horns have incredible magical properties, when he stops.

“What?” asks Lily, frowning. 

A small smile curls on his face. He nods his head towards the loveseat perpendicular to the couch, opposite Lily’s own armchair. “Look.”

Lorcan has disappeared somewhere, probably the toilet, leaving Eliza and Hugo by themselves. Eliza reaches for the last bottle of beer on the table, but so does Hugo. Their hands meet all the way up to their elbows. 

Eliza lets her hand brush his wrist when she drops it. 

“You can have it, Hugh,” she says, a little flustered.

He says something Lily can’t quite hear. Eliza ends up with the last bottle, smiling to herself, and the look of realization on Hugo’s face is long overdue.

“Thank Merlin,” she mutters.

“Hmm?” asks Lysander.

When he catches her eye, Lily feels herself warm. “Nothing, nothing. You were saying?”

Lysander opens his mouth to continue, but Lorcan reappears in the living room, yawning. 

“Guys. It’s half one, and I have a viewing at eight. I think we’ll take our leave for now.”

“Wimp,” calls Hugo, cupping his hands around his mouth for emphasis. 

“Yes, yes,” agrees Lorcan vaguely, rolling his eyes. “Me, the perennial loser, who makes three times as much money as you do.”

Eliza cackles. Hugo slumps into his seat, flipping Lorcan the bird.

“Lovely to catch up with you all.” Lysander rises, half-laughing himself. “I’ll see you on Monday?” He looks at Lily.

She swallows down her heart. “Yeah. See you Monday.”

  
  


* * *

_ February 13, 2028 _

There’s a parcel on Lily’s chair when she arrives. 

“What’s this?” she asks suspiciously, looking between it and Draco.

“It won’t kill you,” he says with a great roll of his eyes. “There’s no need to look at me with such suspicion.”

“Hmm.” Lily grabs the parcel, shaking it lightly. “Are you going to tell me what this is  _ for _ ? Is this part of the training?”

“No, no. I…” he trails off, looking somewhat strained. “I wanted to apologize.”

She sets the parcel down on her lap. 

Draco frowns. “I don’t want to do to you what was done to me. I should have forced you back through the Floo last week, but you had to martyr yourself like every other ridiculous Gryffindor I’ve met. You were worse off for it, and I was a poor tutor for facilitating it.”

Lily blinks for a moment, pure shock. Then, she shrugs. “I wouldn’t have listened to you anyway.”

“I would have called your father if you’d didn’t. I should have done, actually.”

Lily’s jaw drops. “You’d  _ tell _ on me? Like I’m a bloody child?”

“You’d tell me if Scorpius was struggling like that, wouldn’t you?” He crosses his arm, challenging her to disagree with him. “I was a poor tutor, Lily. Even worse, you’re practically family. Family should not treat each other like that.”

He looks at her evenly, continuing. “You told me I very nearly overstepped last week. I should have checked in on you after that, but the thought hardly crossed my mind until you showed up to our next session looking well past exhausted. That was wrong of me. I’m sorry, Lily.”

She’s not sure what to say. He did  _ almost _ cross a line. She did wear herself thin. But her hurt was relatively fleeting on both accounts, and she keeps coming back because she trusts him.

She decides on a “Thank you.” 

“The gift… Go on, open it—“ he gestures at her lap “— is not an attempt to buy your forgiveness, I’m sure you understand. I wouldn’t make such a pitiful go at it if that was my intention.”

She rolls her eyes, but obliges him anyway. The box is wrapped in old copies of the  _ Prophet _ , a choice which has an understated quality to it that she can’t say she has often associated with Draco Malfoy. When she pulls it all away, she opens the box and pulls out a boiler suit in forest green. 

“Water, stain, and odor resistant,” he explains. “They’re also almost completely unrippable, so no need to worry about stray claws or hooves.”

An unbelievable fondness is growing in her chest, but she has a reputation to uphold. “In  _ green _ ?”

“Yes, well, I could not miss out on the opportunity to torture you in the inconsequential ways.”

She smiles, grateful to have the bickering back. She sets the boiler suit back into the box. “Thank you, Draco, this… this is wonderful.”

The gift doesn’t say,  _ your favor is a commodity that I can buy _ . It says,  _ I see the core of who you are. I want to show you it matters to me.  _

He nods, stiff again. “Now. The first item on today’s agenda… How are you feeling?”

* * *

_ February 14, 2028 _

Monday morning, Lily wakes up to Gilbert meowing directly into her face. She opens her eyes slowly, trying to push him off her chest. 

“Gil, you spoiled creature,” she begins, but he meows so loudly that it cuts her off. She blinks. “I mean,  _ really _ .”

She shoves him off her chest and onto the mattress, ignoring his indignant little chirp. With a roll of her eyes, she throws her feet out of bed and checks the clock on her nightstand. 

“ _ Shit _ .”

She’s twenty minutes late. Her shift has already started. 

Gilbert meows his victory. 

“I take it all back. You’re the perfect kneazle, and I owe you a thousand treats. Thank you, thank you.”

He purrs, and Lily tries to shove herself into the closest boiler suit she can find, summoning her boots from by the fireplace. The boiler suit happens to be Draco’s, which fits surprisingly well even if it is new and stiff. She shoves her feet in her shoes, and apparates as soon as her heels make contact with the sole. 

She lands in a half-melted pile of snow just outside the farmhouse. Who barks from inside, notifying everyone in a kilometer radius that somebody has arrived at the front door. 

“There she is.” She hears Tim sigh from within. “Needed her bloody beauty sleep today.”

Lily pushes open the door, scurrying into Horton’s office and trying to look as penitent as she can. Everybody is in there when she arrives.

Horton has wheeled himself from behind his desk, and gestures to a small map of the Reserve that Isabel has clearly drawn. She stands to the side of it, holding a quill at the ready. Lysander watches across from them, next to Tim, whose work clothes he must have borrowed for the day. They come up short on his arms and legs, exposing a pair of woolen socks above the line of his boots. 

Horton lifts a brow at her when she crosses into his office. “I don’t know whether to be annoyed or worried. Late, Lily?”

Lysander is watching her curiously. She makes a solid effort to ignore his eyes burning into her. 

“Sorry.” She feels herself blush. “My alarm — I must not have set it properly. I had training last night with Draco, so I got home late. My roommate’s kneazle woke me up.”

Horton nods thoughtfully. “Very clever creatures, some of my favorites… I’m terribly allergic, though. Breaks my heart.”

“Sorry,” Lysander interjects, “you mentioned this last week, but I got distracted—“ 

“I bet you did,” mutters Tim. Lily glares in his direction.

Lysander flushes, but continues. “Why are you meeting with Mr. Malfoy? What are these sessions?”

“That is what we were about to tell you when she arrived, Lysander,” says Horton. Lysander turns to face him. Lily takes the opportunity to scowl again at Tim, and then kneels down to tie her shoelaces. 

“In a shed — 4C, yes, where Isabel is pointing — we’ve been tending to one of our newest residents. He’s a Satori, a kind of mind-reading monkey. He’s a bit hostile at times, though Lily assures me he’s calmed down significantly since she’s been working with him. Lily?”

She stands up, abandoning her half-tied shoelaces. Clearing her throat, she says, “Er, yes. I’ve been practicing Occlumency with Draco Malfoy for nearly a month and a half now. I’ve only just managed to Occlude successfully, but the progress I’ve made in the time since is extraordinary. The mind-reading is a defense mechanism used to shock or repel predators. When I Occlude, both Clyve and I become more at ease. It allows for a more successful care experience all around.”

Isabel, Tim, and Horton all nod appreciatively. 

Lysander blinks. “Sorry. Just to clarify. You learned Occlumency? For one of the creatures?”

“Basic Occlumecy, yes.” She nods. “Nothing advanced just yet, though Draco certainly has his notions.”

She suspects he’ll start delivering simultaneous Occlumency and etiquette lessons by May. 

“We’re a specialized Rehabilitation Reserve, as I’m sure you’re aware,” says Horton. “We take on… unique cases. Those that other Reserves might not be capable of handling. We’re a small bunch, but we’re all highly skilled in one way or another. Tim is an empath, for example, and Isabel has had extensive Healing training for both humans and animals. Lily is a jack of all trades, I suppose.”

“And master of none,” she jokes.

Isabel turns to Lysander. “But don’t think we just shove work off on people if we can’t handle it. For the most part, we’re all involved with all of the creatures. You’ll be working with everyone, even Clyve once we figure out the best way to establish a bond that doesn’t involve our thoughts being read out loud to poor Lily.”

Horton nods. “Why don’t you three give him the walking tour? I’ll find those treatment plan binders. I know I put them somewhere…”

Isabel takes charge of the tour of the grounds. Lily is happy to let her lead, as is Tim, who walks dutifully behind, inspecting Lysander in sidelong glances that are much less subtle than he thinks.

“It’s a lovely Reserve,” Lysander says. “I’m surprised you didn’t mention it in more of the letters.”

Lily laughs. “Eliza and Hugo wouldn’t let me. Said I would write too much, and that none of us could afford the owl fees of a letter to South Africa that weighed a kilo.”

“Yes,” Lysander smiles wryly. “The in-depth accounts of Hugo’s dating life were definitely the details I was looking for in the letters from home. At least Eliza’s accounts of Gringotts were interesting.”

“Come on!” calls Isabel, grinning broadly. “This is my favorite barn.”

The three of them scurry up the hill to the big barn. Isabel opens the door for all of them, and they file in. 

When he walks in, Lysander has to take a moment. “Wow.  _ Wow _ .”

She can’t blame him. The big barn is nothing if not jaw-dropping. The roof is charmed transparent, allowing for natural light to spill into the structure. It’s almost reminiscent of the Great Hall.

It’s an eclectic space. A significant portion of the back of the barn is devoted to a gigantic tank filled with salt water. In one of the bigger pens, a few goats exhale sparks out their nostrils. Across from them is Moscow, the only donkey on the Reserve. Next to him, a few llamas with bright gold wool chew on their cud.

Isabel beams. “In the back is the Miniature Bearded Sea-Dragon. His name is Charlie.”

The look Lysander gives Lily is almost suspicious. She can only grin.

Isabel continues. “Then there’s the fire-breathing goats…” She lists them all by name. “And Moscow — he’s terrain-adaptive, so if he goes underwater he’ll grow gills, and when he spends time with the Pegasi he sprouts wings.”

Lysander looks between the three carers. “I didn’t even know creatures like this existed.”

“Specialized Reserve,” grins Tim. “BOO!”

All of them jump, but so do the three Demiguise lying on the floor of their pen. The Demiguise seldom turn visible, but Tim has become somewhat of an expert in startling them into view. 

Lysander balks. “ _ Three _ ?” The Demiguise swiftly vanish. “Three Demiguise… Lily, how could Eliza and Hugo ever find this place boring?”

“If you think that’s something, just wait till you hear about the llamas. And the Mooncalves! After this, we’ll head outside, there’s so much to see…” Isabel almost squeals. 

The tour continues for the rest of Tim and Isabel’s shifts. The two of them execute their jobs as they move through the Reserve, Lily and Lysander in tow. Generally, in the overlap of their schedules, Lily does housekeeping duties or paperwork in the farmhouse with Horton, so it’s something of a treat for her to see her colleagues in action. 

Tim’s ability to assess the needs of any given animal are unparalleled. It’s like he just pets them and he  _ knows _ . And Isabel brings equal parts enthusiasm and tenderness to her care. When they make their way to the stables, the Pegasi brighten upon seeing her. They let out little snorts and huffs of affection, ones they’ve never had for Lily in her time at the Reserve.

Lysander makes himself invaluable almost immediately, offering to climb inside Leena the Leucrotta’s mouth to clean her teeth. Tim holds onto his ankles while he scrubs dutifully. Secretly, Lily is relieved. It is not her favorite task on the Reserve. She’s much better suited to ankle-holding. 

Tim and Isabel clock off at two in the afternoon, bidding them both goodbye with smiles. 

When they’re gone, Lily turns to Lysander. “How long have you been here? I thought you were only working the morning shift with them?”

They’re walking from the edge of the pebbled drive where the others had apparated away, towards the farmhouse to check in with Horton. 

“I offered to stay the whole day today. I know it’s a bit long, but I need to get a feel for how the place works. Not just one shift at a time. It’s a big change, you know, and I feel like… like it was a good way to get my bearings.” 

He looks intensely at the gravel when they walk. Again, Lily is overwhelmed by the familiarity of it. Maybe he is more blonde and more tanned, but some things never did change. 

“That was generous of you,” she says.

“We worked long days on site, anyway. Working a nine hour shift will be a treat when I pick.”

“Even if you have to show up at 6 in the morning?” For her part, Lily is glad she didn’t spend long working the morning shift. When she joined the team, she switched fairly quickly with Tim so that she could work in the evenings.

“For the creatures here? I’d show up at four.”

Lily laughs. “It’s a shame you couldn’t see all of them. We’ll have to work up to Clyve, of course, but the Mooncalves are so sweet, and I think they’ll like you once you meet them next month. You have the right temperament.”

That wins her a broad smile. “That’s an incentive to work the late shift, at least.”

She bumps into him. “Oh, never mind me.”

That makes him look up. As he lifts his head, the afternoon sun lights up his bright blonde hair. 

“I do mind you,” he says with Lovegood sincerity. “I mind you a great deal.”

Her heart clenches, and she guides that bittersweet feeling behind two barn doors in her mind. Maybe she’d learned for Clyve’s sake, but it wouldn’t hurt to try to maintain her professionalism around Lysander. 

She considers a possibility of spending the rest of her evenings with him among the creatures and the dirt, and she wonders if even the endless farmland of her mind has enough space to tuck away all of that longing. 

It’s late when she finally makes it home. She apparates to the alley beside her flat, bidding Lysander farewell at the end of the Reserve’s driveway. He goes to Lorcan’s flat in Manchester, and she lands hard on her heels in Hogsmeade. The village is strung up in pink lights for Valentine’s Day, and Lily swears she can spot a few truant students exiting out of Madam Puddifoot’s.

The walk up the stairs to her front door has never felt lonelier. She doesn’t have a key, but when she sticks her wand in the keyhole, the wards let the door click open. She sighs, kicking off her boots and unzipping her boiler suit. 

She’s peering into the refrigerator when she hears Eliza muffled through the door to Hugo’s bedroom. 

“Merlin, Hugh, just be here with me. Just be with me.” She sounds almost close to tears. 

There is a brief silence in which Hugo is undoubtedly stunned. “But… all these years, you’ve never dated anybody. You’ve never said anything… I thought you just weren’t interested in that. In sex, I mean, or dating. Which is perfectly okay!”

He lets out a yelp where she must have punched him. “Of course it’s okay, you prick! But I’ve never said anything because you’ve always been busy shagging half of London, not because I didn’t want to shag you!”

“Scotland, actually… Ow! _Okay_ , okay!”

Lily muffles a laugh. Outside the door, Gilbert purrs in a very self-satisfied way.

“Look, I can see that you’re not interested, and that’s fine! Just don’t freeze me out, and we’ll be grand.” 

The door begins to open, but is quickly slammed back shut. 

“Liza _ ,  _ please. I don’t want half the country for just one night,” Hugo says. His voice drops so low Lily can hardly hear it. He sounds almost nervous. “I want to be with you.” 

It’s quiet after that. Lily closes herself into her and Eliza’s bedroom, and she’s not surprised when she wakes up alone. 

  
  
  


* * *

_ February 24, 2028 _

Lysander worked three full days before Horton forced him to pick a shift. And to nobody’s surprise, he chose the most convenient option, opting to fill in Zane’s vacancy in the late shift. Lily had almost hoped he’d talk to Tim, switch to the morning shift and spare her the heartache and the full day of Occlumency trying to keep her thoughts on the animals and only the animals. 

Silence spans large intervals of their work days. Their chores push them to opposite ends of the Reserve, sometimes for hours at a time, but their paths always cross again. Crisp, perfect, quietude accompanies them in their work together, somehow unruined by the characteristic farm noises that permeate the Reserve. And it’s natural — it’s like they’re seventeen and spending all their free time down at Hagrid’s hut again. 

But it’s not all soundless and serious. They talk, and sometimes it feels like they’ll never stop. It’s mostly Lily, opening her big fat mouth because she can’t be quiet when she has so many questions about his time in South Africa, about his approach to any given issue with the creatures, about his opinions on things she never got to wonder about for the last two years. 

And he answers. He’s not so quiet as he was in his Hogwarts years. By no means a loud man, he scarcely raises his voice, and his ventures into compound sentences are occasional at best. But when he speaks, he does it like he wants to be heard. 

It makes Lily’s knees go weak. She wants more, and she wants it to stop, and she can’t stop looking at him in his new work clothes.

Her only refuge is in a little shed with a monkey who can no longer read her mind. It’s early in her shift today when she makes it over to shed 4C. She leaves Lysander inside to deal with the paperwork for a while and makes the small trudge up the hill alone.

Inside, Clyve is on her at once, already reaching a hand up to see what she’s got in her pocket today.

“Hey!” Lily laughs, pushing him gently off her leg. “One step at a time, buddy.”

He chitters impatiently, but his eyes are bright and curious — happy, even. 

Lily kneels, pulling from her tool belt a brush and some fur-conditioning serum. Almost immediately, all that brightness is gone from his eyes. He furrows his brow, and she feels the rush of him pushing against her head. She might tease him, that stupid monkey of hers, but she knows Clyve is dead clever, really. He recognizes the glass phial of viscous liquid and cringes from it. In the past, in his time before he was brought to Horton’s, she doesn’t doubt that corks and phials meant bad things for him. She holds fast against his intrusion. She’s a stronger Occlumens everyday, and Clyve hasn’t broken through her defenses for almost two weeks. 

“Come on now,” she intones. “I’m not going to hurt you, you know that.”

He gives a little screech, walking a step back on his hind legs. Lily flops onto her bum, trying to make herself seem as passive as possible. 

“I just need to get to your fur, Clyve. You can’t be happy with it now.”

The matting on his stomach has spread to his chest. If he were a short-haired beast, she might be less worried about it, but his fur is long and dense. The tangle looks painful, and she thinks she’ll probably have to cut it off, eventually.

Some days, he actually allows Lily to groom him, but only ever with her hands and only on his back and legs. (He always repays the favor, though, combing through Lily’s hair in kind once she has finished. It’s good manners, she allows, but the aftermath is not her favorite hairstyle.) Whenever she approaches his stomach or chest, he hisses or scratches, and pushes right up against the boundaries of her mind. 

She managed to feed him a cycle of antibiotics last week, through some divine combination of good luck and stubborn dedication. She’s not sure they worked, or if they were even the right treatment approach, but she’s beginning to feel desperate. Whatever is the matter with his skin, leaving it untreated for this long could have serious consequences. If she was a more stubborn carer, she would have hit him with a Sleeping Charm or Draught for Dreamless Sleep and taken matters into her own hands. She can’t say it’s never crossed her mind, but she knows the consequence would be losing all the trust they’d built already.

Lily extends a hand to him. He looks at it skeptically, but comes forward a step. She mimics touching her own chest, then points to his. 

“You’ll feel better when I do,” she promises. 

She manages to touch his shoulder and inspect the skin there for a few minutes, and he allows it. He’s already reaching toward her pocket again, the greedy bastard. She bites back a grin.

He even tolerates her inspecting the border of the fur around the matted area. She can see the redness and the irritation on his skin — it looks dry, scaly, and painful. She quests closer to it, but he screams, baring his teeth and throwing himself away from her. 

A shock of adrenaline pounds through her on instinct, but she’s not scared of him.

“I’m sorry, Clyvie,” she says. “I’m not trying to hurt you, I promise. I’m trying to help.”

His brown eyes are full of suspicion, and Lily laments the reality that the trust she’s so painstakingly built will have to break a little before it can grow. This has gone on long enough.

She sets some pistachios on the ground between them. “I’ll be back. You won’t like it, but I will.”

Before she exits, she leaves the brush on the ground for him to start to get used to, but she tucks the serum away into her belt. 

Down the hill, everyone is in the farmhouse. Who announces her entry with a round of enthusiastic barks, and she pauses briefly to scratch him between his ears. 

“Where is everyone?” Lily calls, lingering on the porch to hang up her tool belt. 

“Office!” says Horton, just as Tim and Isabel yell, “Kitchen!”

“Meet in the kitchen,” Lily says, already moving down the hall. “I think I need help.”

She finds Isabel and Tim drinking tea at the kitchen table. They’ve already put the kettle back on to boil. There’s a small smattering of paperwork between them, order forms for next month’s restock of food and supplies. 

Horton wheels into the room first, Lysander quick behind him. The latter leans against the doorframe, a quiet observer, while Horton parks at his designated spot at the table. 

“What’s the problem?” asks Horton. 

Lily sighs. “It’s Clyve. I need help inspecting his skin.” She details the month she’s spent trying to coax him into trusting her, the failed antibiotic course, and her fears that the condition will only worsen. “If his fur falls out, that’s one thing. It grows back. But skin is tricker to regrow, and I feel like if I don’t force his hand, the least of our worries will be bald spots or a bit of scarring.”

Tim is torn, she can see it on his face. Isabel has set her mouth, grimacing.

“Well, I’m not compatible for this particular task,” says Horton, referencing his mobility issues. “But I think you’re right, Lily. You’ve got to assess the problem, and then you can decide how to move forward. Animals are more forgiving than we think they are. If you piss him off, it won’t be forever.”

Tim nods. “I agree, and you know I’ll help if push comes to shove, but I’m afraid I won’t be of much use. We overwhelm each other, I think.”

Lily doesn’t doubt it. With Tim’s ability as empath and Clyve’s mind reading, the atmosphere between them is probably supercharged. 

Isabel looks like she’s resigning herself to the fact that she will have to be the one; she’s the most talented healer among them. Tim watches her from the side, frowning at her as her mind turns over, lips pursed in thought. She’s about to open her mouth when—

“I’ll go with you,” says Lysander quietly. He takes a step out from under the doorframe, towards the table. 

Lily looks up, eyes wide. “But you don’t know Occlumency.”

“Neither does anybody else.” He shrugs. “Besides, I think you probably know my mind fairly well already.”

She’s not so sure about that. Almost two weeks of conversation since his return to the UK doesn’t quite make up for two years of distance, the simmering awkwardness they can’t always avoid, and the heartbreak neither of them have acknowledged. She doesn’t know how he feels about most of that, even if she does have a newfound and almost encyclopedic knowledge of the Scamander Addendum to the Pan-African Catalogue of Creatures. 

“Mate, I don’t think you understand,” says Tim, throwing a look out the window. “He knows what you’re thinking before you’re thinking it. The more tense he is, the faster he reads your mind. It’s terrifying.”

Isabel frowns. “Yeah. Even if Lily is with you Occluding on her part, he’ll go deep into your thoughts. He’ll be nervous around you.”

Lysander looks a little daunted at that, and maybe a little impressed. “The Satori are native to Japan, right?” He turns to Lily. “What’s he doing here?”

“Breeder.” All of them grimace. Lily continues, “Somebody from a crime network. Used the Satori to intimidate and extract information. My dad found him in a warehouse in Liverpool half-starved. He called the owner of our Reserve immediately, and Clyve’s been here ever since.”

Lysander’s expression darkens. “That’s horrible.”

“He’s made a lot of progress,” Lily promises. “But Tim’s right. It can be intense.”

“I can do it,” he says. He straightens up, expression earnest. “It’s not like anybody else is willing to do it, anyway. And I’m volunteering.”

Tim shrugs. “He’s got guts. And he came with the highest credentials. If anybody can take it, it’s a Scamander.”

A smile twitches at the edge of Lysander’s lips, and he clamps it down. 

“Agreed,” says Isabel, not quite hiding her relief. “Holler if you need anything, alright?”

They’re silent during the walk up the hill, and Lily is grateful for it. For once, she doesn’t have any questions to ask him. If she knows him as well as she thinks she does, he’s trying to figure out just what to expect, and trying to compare it to anything he might have seen in the field.

Then, if he’s as smart as she thinks he is, he’ll be trying to push everything else out of his mind. 

Just outside the door, she turns to him. She finds herself echoing Draco’s words from not long ago. “Obviously, whatever Clyve interprets from your head stays between us. I won’t tell Eliza or Hugo or anybody.”

He nods. “Okay.”

She feels like she should say something else, but she can’t think of anything she might tell him that he doesn’t already know. He’s never met Clyve, no, but Tim’s assessment of the creature was accurate. Lysander is about as prepared as he’ll ever be.

“Right. Good,” she says instead, and pushes the door open. 

She hasn’t stopped Occluding since she left the shed the first time, but she reminds herself to fortify the barn in her mind before she meets the Satori’s eyeline. When she walks in, Clyve is poking experimentally at the brush she left on the floor.

“Hey buddy,” Lily says, taking a step in. “I told you I’d be back. I brought a friend.”

Lysander steps out from behind her, closing the shed gently behind him. He waves.

Normally, Clyve would be all over her, trying to get at the date he didn’t manage to eat before. But now, he’s looking between Lily and Lysander with a new sort of panic in his eyes.

“Clyve is such a stupid name for a monkey,” he says, watching Lysander nervously. He takes a step backwards in the shed. 

“Hey!” Lily protests. “I chose that name!”

“Not a surprise, considering how badly her parents pick names. Albus Severus. Pigwidgeon. Athlezebub. I mean really, Athlezebub the cat?”

“Sorry,” says Lysander, eyes wide. “It’s not on purpose.”

He stares at Clyve for a minute, then blinks hard. She remembers the first time he read her mind like that, and the way she was so floored he could pick up on the half-formed ideas floating through the back of her head. Not even things she was actively thinking about — though he did catch on to those, too. 

It was a disarming experience, and she can’t imagine how much worse it would have been if she hadn’t been alone with those thoughts.

“Of course not,” she allows. She decides it’s probably not a good idea to blame him for things in his head he can’t control. “Come here, Clyve.”

“Lily is a pretty name. Much better than Albus.”

She turns back to Lysander, forgetting her earlier resolution. Half-amused, she asks, “Would you lay off my brother?”

“Sorry.” Lysander is bright pink.

“This is embarrassing.” Clyve is as far back in the shed as he can be, flinching his gums like he can’t decide whether or not to bare his teeth.

Faintly, she hears Lysander mutter, “You’re telling me, mate.”

“Clyvie,” Lily whispers. She lowers her Occlumency just a bit. His eyes snap to hers. 

“Stupid fucking monkey,” Clyve says, looking somewhat relieved. 

“I didn’t think that!” says Lysander immediately. 

Lily laughs. “It’s fine. It was me. Just letting him know I’m here.”

“Let me see your tummy, Clyve,” says the monkey himself. 

Lily closes the barn door. He is still looking at her, not Lysander. She’s obstructed him from view. With Clyve only able to see her, Lysander’s thoughts are spared for the moment, and she can see the Satori beginning to unwind a bit in the silence.

“Calming charm?” Lysander suggests.

“Tried that early on. Poor Tim almost lost an eye. Clyve’s deathly afraid of wands.”

“Oh.” She can hear the heartbreak in his voice, and she wonders if this is really the job for him. 

Lysander is great with the creatures, there’s no doubt about that, but he’s accustomed to working on Research Reserves or to doing stakeouts to observe animals in the wild. He has experience with magizoology in its most textbook definition. Horton’s is different. It’s a Rehabilitation Reserve; the animals come to them broken, hurt, and afraid. It’s their job to accept them the way they are and heal them as best they can. 

Lily reaches out, brushing Clyve on the shoulder. He chitters affectionately, then spots the date in her pocket. He reaches for it just under her arm. Lily grins, victorious, and clamps down on his back, holding him to her legs while he nibbles on his hard-won treat.

“Merlin, I love her,” recites Clyve.

Lily freezes. She can hear Lysander’s breath hitch. Before she has a chance to think, the creature continues.

“She should have come to South Africa.”

Lysander’s voice is heavy. “Lily—“ 

She looks down at the monkey in her lap. It has no idea it’s just set off a bomb.

“Later.” She’s not sure she’s ever felt so out of breath in her life. She’s opening and closing the barn doors of her mind so quickly she’s not sure how many thoughts she’s corralled. She can’t risk entertaining them, not now. “The animals come first.”

Clyve sighs. “Good point. She’s perfect, isn’t she? We’d have been so great together on site. The animals would have loved her there.”

Lily criss-crosses her legs, preparing to trap Clyve’s legs between her thighs. In a quick move, she twists his body so he’s sitting on her lap. His legs, now turned around, are pressed between her thighs — not too tightly, of course — and she holds one of his arms in each hand. His screech is indignant, but not angry or hurt. 

“It’s okay, Clyvie.”

She’s facing the back of the shed, with Lysander behind her, but there’s enough room for him to come to this side and check out whatever is happening on Clyve’s skin. A window in the back of the shed brings wintery daylight into the space, eliminating the need of wands.

“Come around to this side. Check as much of his fur as you can. I need to be sure it’s not an infection.”

“Got it,” he murmurs. He comes back around to kneel in front of Lily. His approach is methodical and thorough. Research Reserve or not, he’s done this before. 

Clyve is increasing in volume. “No, it makes sense why she never came to South Africa. I don’t know how I never saw it before. She was made for this. It’s Care for her, not magizoology. It’s about the creatures, not the rush of discovery.”

Lysander clenches his jaw. Lily watches him, unable to process. 

He’s never said this many words out loud in all the years she’s known him. Lysander is quiet, always quiet, with a sort of collectedness about him Lily can’t understand or replicate. The monologue of his thoughts is… surprising. Yearning. It would be strange enough to hear it from his own mouth, but to hear his thoughts transcribed by a third party makes them sound more vulnerable. He’s had no choice in offering them to her. 

She hesitates. But that’s not true — he  _ did _ have a choice. He knew the risks. He knew his mind. He chose to do it anyway. He did it for her, knowing it could end very badly for him. 

Something swells in her chest and her throat, and she doesn’t know how to name it. 

“Blimey, is this going to be an awkward conversation when this ends… And Clyve, you’ve really got to work on your self-care, mate… If I have to quit this job after this it’ll have to be some kind of record.”

Lily can’t help it. She laughs. Lysander looks up at her, and she can see the emotion behind his glasses. The embarrassment is clear on his cheeks, but there’s a bit of relief in his eyes.

“Keep going,” she says. She’s not sure if she means Lysander or Clyve.

Lysander returns his attention to the fur. 

“The monkey is definitely ruining my plan,” considers Clyve loudly. 

Clyve pauses then, and quirks his head, and Lily knows he’s pushed deeper into Lysander’s mind. Lysander extracts a phial from his pocket, along with a cotton squab, and continues his work. 

Clyve recites like he’s reading directly from a book. “Five step plan. Step one, return to Britain. Check. Step two, get a stable job. Check. Step three, talk to her again and catch up. Try to be impressive. Step four, after building the friendship back up, try to explain what went wrong. Step five, tell her how you feel.” He pauses for a few, long seconds. “Stupid  _ sodding _ monkey.”

Lily presses down on a smile. A plan. A five step plan. It’s all of Lysander’s pragmatism, but with Lorcan’s stringent organization. She tries to shove the thought away, but it lingers unpenned in her mind that Lorcan might have helped him compose this scheme, just as Hagrid had helped him plan their first date. That maybe he’d been thinking about this for a while now. She has to shut her eyes and force the thought away, ignoring the twinge at the back of her mind from the effort. 

Lysander concludes his examination, sticking the cotton swab into the phial and wrapping it up. Lily holds tight to Clyve, just in case it is true that they eat humans. She feels reasonably confident he won’t eat her.

“Well?”

“There’s definitely something wrong,” murmurs Lysander. He holds up the phial. “There was a sore on his chest leaking some kind of fluid, so I took a sample. Did he have it before you found him or did he develop on site?”

It’s a natural question, but the implication stings. “We keep our facilities clean.”

He grimaces. “No, I just mean—“

“I’ve bungled it all up again.”

“ _ Thank you, Clyve _ .” Lysander grits his teeth. “I meant it could be an autoimmune problem.”

Clyve squirms in her arms, finally losing his patience. He screeches his annoyance. He’s done remarkably well considering how new Lysander is.

“Get the banana from my pocket,” grumbles Lily. “Greedy bastard.”

“That’s not a very kind thing to say,” says Clyve.

They meet eyes, and she’s relieved to hear them both laughing. It doesn’t cut the tension completely, but it’s a start. He reaches around the creature, who hisses, and pulls a banana from Lily’s pocket. He peels it open and presents the tip to Clyve, who nibbles greedily. 

“She’s the one,” he offers around a mouthful of food. 

“ _ Clyve _ ,” Lysander moans. 

Lily feels like someone’s lit a hearth in her chest. “You should head outside. I’ll be right out after you.”

When Lysander exits, Lily releases her hold on Clyve. He darts away from her, glaring as he eats the rest of his banana. The annoyance in his eyes is familiar. 

“Almost reminds me of Draco,” Clyve says. 

Lily hadn’t even realized she’d dropped her Occlumency after Lysander left. She felt as if she was melting back into herself, and with the feeling came a rush of emotion she’d been trapping behind closed doors. 

“He came back,” Clyve reminds her. He swallows the last of the banana down.

For once, she thinks the beast has earned his keep. 

When Lily exits the shed, it’s snowing. Lysander is applying a warming charm to the perimeter of the shed. She wants to tell him not to bother, that the structures are Perma-Charmed to be weather adapting, but she can’t seem to find the words. She lets him carry on, knowing Clyve won’t overheat.

“Hey,” she says. 

He stops, flushing again. For a moment, Lily swears she can see the quiet boy who offered his help to her in Care of Magical Creatures all those years ago. She sees him fourteen, with knuckle-length hair and pink tangles on the backs of his arms. 

He adjusts his glasses, which are beginning to steam with his breath. 

She takes a step closer to him. “Let me.  _ Impervius _ .”

The steam clears at once, and does not come back even when he exhales a long, shuddering breath. “I’m sorry.”

“Why?” she asks.

“It— it was supposed to be better than that. I wasn’t planning on bombarding you with my feelings like that.”

“You said you thought I knew your mind.”

“Yeah,” he agrees. “But that doesn’t mean you wanted to hear that. I didn’t think you would hear it. I thought I could control it better. The Lovegood line has a knack for that kind of thing, so I thought I might too. I was trying to clear my mind, but nothing worked.” He turns even pinker underneath his tan. “I wanted to do something for you to help you, not to make you uncomfortable.”

“I’m not uncomfortable.”

“ _ I _ am,” he mutters, not meeting her eyes. “This was supposed to be part three. Not part five.”

That swelling feeling comes back in her chest. Her ribs strain. “How about part four?”

He winces. “I’m not a good communicator, Lily.”

She knows this. For the first year of working with him in Care, he could barely make eye contact with her for more than ten seconds. He spoke in two word sentences — until she did something wrong, and then his responses were as confident as they were thorough. It was disarming at first. She nods. She’s always known this.

“I wanted to ask you to come with us to South Africa. Really, I wanted  _ you _ to ask to come with us. I wanted you to want it.”

She frowns. “Lysander…”

“I think it’s for the best, though. I don’t think you would like it there the way you love it here. You call Clyve a stupid monkey, but you were so good with him.” 

He trails off, looking at the melting snow at the edge of the shed. The warming charm draws a line of heat around the perimeter of the building, melting it away even as it comes down harder.

“I didn’t understand you, Lily. In some important ways, I think.”

In his defense, she thinks she probably misunderstood him in a pretty pivotal way, too. She shrugs a vague agreement.

All these years, she thought his mind was a calm and quiet place because  _ he _ was so quiet. She had always admired that about him. That, despite the sometimes awkward Lovegood honesty, he was decisive about when he shared his thoughts. When he shared something with her, it was because she had earned it. Clearly, that isn’t entirely true. Clearly, he thinks just as long and hard and messily about things as she does. Maybe that quietude is more than just shyness or certainty; maybe it’s nerves, not unlike hers. 

“You know how I feel,” says Lysander. He risks a look straight into her eyes. “I’d like to get to know you better. As you are now. Would that be okay with you?”

Her ribs crack and give way for the swell of affection in her chest. “I think that would be great.”

The snow is all in Lysander’s hair as he smiles down at her. She sees him flutter the stuff out of his thick, golden eyelashes. 

He’s looking at her like she’s an answer, not a question, and Lily could almost cry.

  
  
  


* * *

_ February 26, 2028 _

Lily bursts out of Draco’s Floo. They’ve not scheduled a meeting for today, but she’s pretty sure that she is the only person he hangs out with on a regular basis besides his son. It doesn’t take her long to make her way into the living room where she expects him to be sitting in his favorite armchair, likely manhandling a newspaper. 

She lingers in the archway upon arrival. Just as she suspects, he does not look up from the  _ Prophet _ when she walks in. 

“The elves told me we had an intruder. I figured it was you.”

She strolls the short distance between the archway and the chair opposite him, then throws herself into the seat. There’s already a pot of tea sitting between them with two empty cups. 

She bites back a smile. “They told you that there were intruders, and you decided to prepare tea?”

He turns the page noisily. “I figured I’d start introducing etiquette concepts early. I should think that will take us much longer than the Occlumency will.”

She laughs, and he folds away his newspaper. 

“What can I do for you, Potter?” He offers her a scrutinizing look, though not an unfeeling one. “Is this one of those social calls you’ve been so desperate for?”

“Not yet.” She grins. Her leg bounces against the floor, all pent-up energy and excitement. “Test me and don’t hold back.”

She’s had her thoughts corralled away from the moment she came out the Floo. She’s even started piling bricks against the barn door. (It does feel wrong to her, though, in a roundabout way. She’d never trap  _ creatures _ inside a barn.)

“How come you never just want to sit and chat?” he teases. 

She feels him butt up against her mind, but she’s ready.

“Bricks?” he asks.

“A fortifying measure.”

He comes in with more force this time, but can’t push through. She steadies her grip on the armrests, exhilarated. He lets out a puff of air, and in another violent attempt, he finally busts down the door. She feels herself begin to sweat, but she holds fast. 

There’s only one memory in this barn. She’s tucked the rest of them in another one just out of view. The farmland of her mind has been so open, so unending this whole time, and she had only ever restricted herself to a single structure. It seems silly, in hindsight, not to use all the skills in her disposal. Draco must realize what she’s done, because he hesitates in front of the pen like it’s some kind of trap.

She’s not  _ that _ cunning. At least not yet, but she suspects the Slytherin lessons might follow the etiquette. She nudges the memory toward him. When he sees it, it unfolds in her mind too. 

It’s still snowing outside the shed. 

_ “I think that would be great.”  _

In the memory, Lily’s throat clenches like she’s about to cry. Then, before either of them can predict it, she is kissing Lysander like no time has passed at all. She can’t wait for all of Lysander’s good intentions. It’s been two years already, and she’s so, so tired of it. His muscles tense in surprise for a moment, and then wrap around her waist — tight — with no intention of letting go. Around them, the snow is untouched and pristine. 

Then, Lily shoves Draco out of her mind with great force, slamming the barn doors in his face. 

He is sweaty, flushed, and impressed in the aftermath. “That was clever. You found your closure?”

“I did.” She gestures to the spread between them. “ _ Now _ , it’s a social call. I like two sugars.”

His proud little smile as he fixes her tea will be cemented in her mind forever. 

  
  


* * *

  
  


_ EPILOGUE _

_ October 10, 2028 _

Eliza frowns. “You’re not really moving out are you?”

The contents of Lily’s half of their bedroom are boxed up in their living room. Lily is levitating another over as they speak, unable to move much as she has three bowtruckles in her pocket, one of which has begun to climb up the side of her sweatshirt.

“She is,” says Lysander, carrying a lamp out of their room. 

“But we’ll have an extra bedroom.” Eliza’s frown deepens. “You know, this is  _ just _ like when you passed me off to Hugo for Lysander in Care for Magical Creatures.”

“I’d say that worked out well for both of us in the end.”

Gilbert meows an agreement.

“We can turn it into an office,” suggests Hugo. “Or Gilbert can have it, spoiled prince that he is.”

The kneazle in question stretches and pads over to Eliza’s feet. He pushes against them, scent marking her. 

“He’s trying to butter you up,” warns Lily. “Give him an inch and he’ll take a mile.”

Eliza scoops him up into her arms. “Well, we’ve got to have at least one smarmy ginger in the house. You’re gone, and Hugo’s gone all brunette as he’s gotten older.”

Lily rolls her eyes, amused. “Is that everything? Lorcan said we’ve got to be moved in by five.”

“Oh, maybe he can move in!” suggests Eliza. 

Hugo blanches, looking desperately at Lily for help. Lysander presses his lips together to keep from laughing. As Lily heard the story, it was him who walked in on the two of them during a graduation afterparty. 

“He’s an estate agent, Eliza. I don’t think he wants to move into our shitty flat.”

“It’s not your shitty flat anymore,” she says mournfully. “I hope you’re happy, Ander. A broken home.”

“I am,” he confirms. “Lily, a bowtruckle is about to fall out of your pocket.”

“Is it?” She looks down in alarm. A second bowtruckle has made a daring leap from her pocket, now clinging onto the edge for dear life. She coaxes it onto her finger, depositing it onto her shoulder. “There you go.”

When she looks back over, Lysander is staring at her like she has sprouted delicate, bright blue wings. She flushes darkly. “Er, let me check our room one last time.”

“I’ll help,” offers Lysander.

Hugo makes a retching noise. “See, Liza? Disgusting. That’s why she’s moving out. So I don’t have to see that, and she doesn’t have to see this…”

Lily is quite glad she doesn’t have to see it. Lysander closes the door behind him. 

“Ignore Eliza,” she says. “She’s theatrical.”

“I know.” There’s affection in his voice. “She’s one of my best friends, too.”

It’s true. New countries and new routines don’t come without growing pains, but in the eight months he’d been back in the UK, Lysander has almost effortlessly reinserted himself back into their lives. Eliza and Hugo are thrilled to have him back, just like the old days. 

Lily bites her lip. “I give it two weeks before Hugo breaks down and tells her about Lorcan.”

“Generous of you. We’ll have a couch by then, won’t we?”

“We’ll make it happen.” 

He picks the bowtruckle off her shoulder, and the other from off her sleeve, and sets them on top of Eliza’s dresser. When he’s done, he pushes back a lock of Lily’s hair. “Can I kiss you?”

“You don’t have to ask every time,” she says a little impatiently. She’s already standing on her tiptoes, leaning in.

He smiles. “I just really like hearing you say yes.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so there it is!! again, a massive thank you to thealmostrhetoricalquestion for putting this together, and to my betas motherofmercury, maddi, and anophelia for their kind and much-needed guidance. 
> 
> and just in case anybody was wondering ... yes i DID name horton's dog who bc when he barks to announce someone approaching the farmhouse horton literally hears a who. i amuse myself endlessly 
> 
> thank you so much for reading <3 please peruse the rest of the collection!!


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